QUALITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS

Qualitative Data Analysis

Qualitative Data Analysis

Introduction

Qualitative Data Analysis (QDA) is a method of inquiry employed in several academic disciplines mainly marketing and social sciences. It aims to gather a detailed understanding of behaviour and the factors that affect these behaviours. It answers questions as to why and how certain decisions were made and in order to get this done, more focused samples are needed (Bryant and Charmaz, 2007).

Qualitative research methods produce general answers to questions and are usually reliable since the sample has openness of opinion and is free to give his comments. However, compiling the results of the interviews are difficult since there is no measure of the degree of the responsiveness of the answers. For example, if someone says that he likes cold water, there is no measure as to how much cold water he prefers. However, this issue is solved with the help of quantitative research which uses figures to present the conclusion (Gasser, 1986, pp. 205-225).

QDA is the variety of procedures and processes by which qualitative data is used to come up to a conclusion about various situations and people. The central point of QDA is top examine symbolic and meaningful content of qualitative data (Orlikowski, 1993, pp. 309-340).

This analysis incorporated noticing things, collecting things, and thinking about things. These modes of collecting data are usually simple as it is observational and not many calculations are required (Seidel, 1998, pp. 1-5). There are various types of Qualitative Data Analysis such as: action research ethnographic content analysis, interactionism, clinical research ethnography life history study, communication, educational ethnography, transformative research, intensive evaluation, imaginal psychology, connoisseurship and criticism, document study heuristic research symbolic interactionism, direct research grounded theory qualitative evaluation, Delphi study field study phenomenography, content analysis ethnomethodology panel research etc (Dey, 2005, pp. 1-2).

[Online QDA]

Grounded Theory

Grounded theory is the theory that inductively developed from a body of information. If the task is performed well, the theory will perfectly fit a dataset. This is quite different from the grand theory which is derived without the use of data and therefore may not fit a dataset (Urquhart, 2010, pp. 357-381).

This theory is different from other theories of QDA although it is difficult to distinguish between them. Thus researchers often consider cases as a whole and study them together in order to reach certain outcomes (Smit, 1999, pp. 219-222).

Grounded theory is one of the most important theories in the world and there are literally thousands of reports published that use this theory. Apart from this, several books have also been published. One reason for this huge amount of literature is that fact that this research method has gained so much attention that critics continuously comes up with new theories and concepts about this theory (Pettigrew, 1985, pp. 53-78).

This theory uses a case-orientation approach to come up with conclusions. This approach compares several cases to determine the place where the causal differences may exist. Similar cases are all studied together in order to see what they all have in common ...